Do you park right next to your intended swim

The senses of fish, like so many other animals, are more highly tuned to their environment than our own. From a highly developed sense of hearing (sounds carry just as far under water), to colour vision (in coarse fish), to their ability to detect vibrations via the lateral line system, fish are quite capable of sensing our presence. It is though possible to remain relatively undetected as we have both cunning and the fact that we are to some point divorced from the environment of our prey on our side. Many other the skills can be learnt with time, and these often come down to fore-thought. Do you park right next to your intended swim? Do you slam the car doors? Do you fish right on the edge of the water? Do you cast a shadow over the water? Do you bang your bivvy pegs in with a mallet? Do you plumb up while fishing with a four ounce lead? All of these things, and many more, can at best reduce your chances of catching. Obviously, the key is to think about how you can minimise the disturbance that you cause in your style of fishing. Ideally you will blend into the background, but this is not always possible. Perhaps the simplest thing that you can do is to keep away from the water as much as you can! If you have to walk around, keep away from the edge. Similarly if you are pitching a bivvy for a few days, move it back a bit. Use the environment to your advantage and use it to conceal your presence. While we can minimise the amount of noise we make on the bank, often anglers seem to forget these rules when fishing at longer ranges. Although the noise you make on the bank may have less effect on fish at range, do not forget that you do still have a connection with the fish. Casting heavy leads makes me cringe. Generally, I will use the lightest lead I can get away with. The sound of a three ounce lead hitting the water carries a huge distance and cannot help matters. Although I do not think that lead shape matters a great deal in most situations, I do prefer the older zipp style leads when fishing big leads as they make less noise on entry. A small point, but perhaps it could make the difference. Chucking great big marker floats attached to heavy (braided) lines and big leads makes an horrendous amount of noise. While plumbing is an essential part of feature finding, do you have to do it while fishing? Certainly if I have fish rolling in a swim that I am fishing I will let them tell me where to cast rather than make ten, twenty or more casts with the plumbing gear. The same goes for baiting up. If the fish are there then I want to nab one and then worry about where they are going to go, so itís single hooks baits only for me. A bit of a pet hate of mine is the preponderance on many waters of anglers who canít help but fiddle with their bite alarms. Even the cheapest alarms have an on/off switch and a volume control, something that many people seem to forget. Not only is it good manners to turn your alarms off when fiddling with the lines, but it could also catch you more fish. There is no doubt that sound can be transmitted along lines and so every time you tweak that alarm you may well be alerting the fish to your presence. Makes you think doesnít it?

You canít beat a few sessions stalking fish to really show you how aware they can be of our presence on the bank. Even the slightest disturbance can give the game away and make them harder to catch. Still, this isnít rocket science, and best of all, keeping quiet doesnít require any expensive gadgetry or super trendy gear, just a little bit of thought.